The so-called Luminous Veil is, for me, a symbol-laden structure. The Luminous Veil is a late addition to the half kilometre length of Toronto’s Prince Edward Viaduct. It was designed to end the viaduct’s reputation as one of North America’s premiere suicide destinations. Michael Ondaatje has paid homage to the viaduct in his novel, In The Skin Of The Lion, and includes an episode where a construction worker saves a nun from plummeting into the Don Valley below. The viaduct also appears in Bruce Cockburn’s folk song, “Anything Can Happen.” More recently, in “War On Drugs,” The Barenaked Ladies share their thoughts on the upgraded structure:
Near where I live there’s a viaduct
Where people jump when they’re out of luck
Raining down on the cars and trucks below
They’ve put a net there to catch their fall
Like that’ll stop anyone at all
What they don’t know is that when nature calls you go
Although Stephen Page’s lyrics suggest that the Luminous Veil has merely shifted suicides to other bridges, I have heard (from grief counselors) that it may, in fact, prevent impulsive suicides.
Personally, I’m more interested in what the structure means as a cultural expression. When I stand on the bridge and gaze over the Don Valley (camera in hand, of course), I’m inclined to imagine the scene before me as a landscape photograph. But I view it through the Veil’s metal rods. It looks for all the world as if I’m viewing the scene from a prison cell. Ironic, given that one of the buildings within the scene is the Bridgepoint Health Centre on the site of the old Don Jail.
Ironies don’t end there. I sense a foundational irony embedded in our contemporary obsession with public safety. Naturally, we want to keep people from killing themselves, but we do so in a way that produces the imagery of a prison cell. Yes, we make the structure safe, but we do so at a cost. The cost is a diminished experience of our world, maybe even a diminishment of ourselves. We make our bodies safe, but put our spirits at risk.
Anxious for their children’s safety, parents drive them everywhere in SUVs. This “helicopter” style of parenting has become sufficiently embedded in the North American way of life that parents who let their children go to school by themselves are deemed negligent. Never mind that carbon-spewing SUVs may jeopardize our children’s futures. Never mind that helicoptering infantilizes what are supposed to be gradually maturing relationships. Yes, we make our bodies safe, but put our spirits at risk.
In Canada, the Harper Conservatives propose Bill C-51, citing the demands of public safety in the light of terrorism at the hands of radicalized … blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard all the rhetoric before. Public safety is a noble enterprise. But at what cost? Warrantless wiretaps? Indefinite detentions? Reversed presumptions? Murky definitions? Wide discretionary powers without accountability? Surveillance as the norm? The result would be a chilling effect on the very freedoms Bill C-51 is touted as protecting. The result would be a demoralization of the citizenry. Yes, we make our bodies safe, but put our spirits at risk.
Easter approaches, and I can’t help but notice that, when looked at from a particular angle, the Luminous Veil produces a strikingly Christocentric image. The Veil’s struts form a row of crosses that lean off the side of the bridge and over the Don Valley. I wonder if it’s coincidental that the next lines in the Barenaked Ladies song are likewise Christocentric:
They say that Jesus and mental health
Are just for those who can help themselves
But what good is that when you live in hell on earth?
I have no great interest in a blood-sacrifice atonement theology that culminates in a magical resurrection. After all, I live in the modern world and such things have no hold on me. But I do have a great interest in the wisdom of the story. During his life, Jesus had a lot to say about fear—“consider the lilies of the field” and all that. Today, our mental health professionals might call it anxiety, instead, but whatever we choose to call it, most everything Jesus said and did was a response to fear. The same can be said of all our great spiritual leaders. At various times, Jesus responded to fear engendered by the presence of foreigners, by disparities of wealth, by looming military and political might, by the erosion of cultural values at the hands of colonizing forces. Finally, he responded to the one fear we all are guaranteed to face.
I wonder if, maybe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has gleaned the wisdom best from this story in his distinction between cheap and costly grace. Our yearning for a perfect safety produces a cheap grace. We aspire to live in a plastic Disney paradise where wonder lasts as long as our ADHD attention spans and gratitude is expressed in cash. But the Easter story is a story of costly grace. Perfect safety is illusory. As Bruce Cockburn puts it: “anything can happen.” So embrace the risk. The Easter story exhorts us to live fully as spiritual people and that’s possible only to the extent that we confront (and let go of) our fears.
I revisit the struts of the Luminous Veil and imagine them as people, one arm gripping the side of the bridge, the other, stretched out towards the valley floor. I imagine the people letting go and plummeting. (As I said at the outset, this is a symbol-laden structure.) It’s only by letting go that we can enjoy an authentic encounter with our world.
